


he’ll know me crazy, soothe me daily

by mimosaeyes



Series: (and my pulses start) cathedrals in my heart [3]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Banter, Day Five, Established Relationship, M/M, more cheese, prompt: anniversaries, prompt: domesticity, prompt: family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 13:20:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9659183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimosaeyes/pseuds/mimosaeyes
Summary: “Seven years ago today, I left home,” Viktor suddenly confesses. “I’ve been estranged from my parents ever since.”For Victuuri Week on tumblr, prompts: “domesticity”, “anniversaries”, “family”.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Jackie and Wilson by Hozier, with a changed pronoun.

It’s late on Saturday morning, Yuuri is in bed stretching cat-like and luxurious, and Viktor hasn’t come in yet smelling like freshly made pancakes to kiss him awake. 

Yuuri freezes mid-yawn and checks his bedside alarm clock, even though he’s certain in his innate sense that today, for some reason, the natural rhythms of their lives together have been disrupted. He reaches over to touch Viktor’s side of the bed — cold, not even the ghost of his familiar warmth. Brow furrowing, Yuuri swings his legs out of bed, suddenly more alert as he goes off in search of his husband. 

Viktor isn’t in the kitchen, although the ingredients for their breakfast have been halfheartedly laid out: a bag of flour sits on the counter but not a mixing bowl, the wrong type of pan waits on the stovetop. Neither is he in the living room, sidetracked from his everyday routine by a surprise call, or even out back in the small garden that Yuuri tends to without overwhelming success. 

No, after exhausting all the likely places to search, Yuuri concludes he’s misread the situation and starts heading indoors to check his phone for a text telling him where he’s gone. But then he sees Viktor, sitting in the driver’s seat of their car, just staring down at the steering wheel. 

Wrapping his dressing gown tighter around himself, Yuuri trots over, gently opens the front passenger door, and casually settles into his seat. 

Viktor’s only response is to inhale deeply and exhale silently, like a sigh on mute. 

After a moment Yuuri leans over and kisses his cheek, which is surprisingly warm in the wintry air. “Hello, lover,” he murmurs in Russian, speaking awkwardly in a phonetic imitation of Viktor’s customary greeting to him. His voice fills the insular space of the car interior, screened off from the harsh outside. “How are we this morning?”

It hurts — but only a little, only a twinge — when Viktor doesn’t open up at that. When his face doesn’t brighten, when he doesn’t turn to him, babbling something about getting absentminded in his old age or complaining dismissively about some trivial upset. It hurts less because Yuuri is stuck outside Viktor’s walls, and more because he knows by now that those walls don’t go up without good reason. Viktor is mercurial; he can segue in a heartbeat from delighted exclamations to sombre chiding. The few things that weigh him down, emotionally and psychologically, have a tendency to be patently difficult to work through.

Viktor belatedly winks at him, the cheekiness affected and lacklustre. “Better with you here,” he replies. 

The words come out just a shade too heavy for Yuuri to back off now. “Well you aren’t quite here, are you? I mean your mind isn’t.”

He notices then that Viktor’s hands are shaking on the wheel, and so reaches forward to hold them. His knuckles are almost white with how hard he’s been gripping, but a bit of the tension dissipates as Yuuri rubs his thumb soothingly over them.

Yuuri gets the strangest urge to say, “Easy,” the way one might calm down a bucking horse, the way he used to do to comfort Vicchan right before he got his vaccination shots at the vet. Just as he is about to, though, he registers the sheer heat coming off of Viktor, practically in waves.

He puts the back of his own chilled hand against Viktor’s forehead and neck, reminded absurdly of his own mother sensing when he was falling ill and sending him off to bed. “You’re feverish. You shouldn’t be out in the cold…”

“Seven years ago today, I left home,” Viktor suddenly confesses. “I’ve been estranged from my parents ever since.”

Yuuri sits back in his seat, floored by the announcement. A beat passes. “What happened?” he asks simply.

Viktor shifts in his seat, slightly uncomfortable as he remembers. Reflexively Yuuri returns his hand to his, which seems to help again, though it does nothing to alleviate the bitterness in his voice. “I was getting some recognition as a skater and decided I’d had enough of them in my life. I made my own way.”

His own lonely way. “That’s not good,” Yuuri remarks.

He only realises how Viktor has misinterpreted the statement when he snorts and says, “Of course it wasn’t a good thing to do. But they weren’t good parents. So I like to think it was the right thing. For me.”

Startled, Yuuri hurries to amend himself. “No, I meant that’s not good for you, to be alone so long. To have been… forced to be alone.”

Viktor turns a mildly incredulous, mostly self-deprecating expression on him. “I’ve already been selfish enough on my own accord, Yuuri, you don’t need to also be focusing on what’s good for me.”

“But I do,” Yuuri says without thought. In the quiet stillness he can hear Viktor’s breath catch in his throat. “Because I love you, because you are family, because you are not alone anymore.”

He’s gazing intently at him, still holding his hand. Viktor sighs. “I’m the one running a fever, shouldn’t I be the rambling overly honest one?”

Yuuri smiles, because Viktor’s tone spells his begrudging conceding of the point. “No, see, you’re the one talking gibberish, if you think I’m going to let you mope yourself to the point of pneumonia when there’s hot tea waiting to be made for you.”

He tugs gently on his hand. “Come on. I’ll make breakfast and you can re-watch Mila Babicheva’s free skate in bed until you cry from how beautiful it is.”

“Is this a not-so-subtle way of getting me back into your bed?” Viktor asks as he gets out of the car, still moving a bit woodenly but rapidly reanimating. He meets Yuuri’s eyes over the roof of the car. “Because it’s working, can I just say.”

Yuuri rolls his eyes despite a surge of affection for the ridiculous man he’s married. “Honey lemon. Medicine. And then we’ll see.”

**Author's Note:**

> I got messed up by jet lag, sleep deprivation and generally being busy settling down. But domesticity is my jam, so here we are.


End file.
